Month: March 2012

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With the amount of training I do I need to take the time to help my body recovery from all the work I make it do. And when I say recover I don’t just mean rest; I need to take the time for massage and stretching. Up until now I have mainly used a foam roller for my self massage with reasonable results. But I have been struggling with some issues that stem from my right hip/butt and have now affected my IT band. A friend of mine saw the Myorope website and thought it might help.

I contacted Neil at Myorope and explained my situation and he was nice enough top send me a “Sixxer” to try out. After reviewing the website on ways to use the Myorope I started adding in the the Myoprope as part of my active recovery routine. Now I know the the Myorope looks a little funny but below are some pictures of me using it.

Working on my IT band at work. It is small enough to take with you any where.

It works really well for trigger point style massage in your glutes.

Post run I use it to work on my IT band.

Overall I think it is a great tool to have in your self massage tool box. The balls are about as hard as a lacrosse ball but not quite. The Myorope works much better than a foam roller when you need to really work out a tight knot. What I tend to do with it is sit on it and find the sore spots in my glutes and just work at them. It works great for my IT band as well because it applies more pressure to the really bad spots on the side of my leg than the foam roller. It can be a little painful at first to use and you have to find the right balance so you aren’t putting too much pressure on you body, but that is true for all the self massaging tools.

The Myoropes vary in price from $19.99-$29.99 depending on the number of balls. I have the Sixxer but I think I am going to get a Duo also. The Sixxer is good for my legs but I have a feeling that the Duo will be even better for my glutes/butt. If you need a little more aggressive self massaging tool, the Myorope should fit the bill quite nicely.

Thanks again to Neil for sending me the product to try out.

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My time is running out. When I first started training for Ironman St. George I posted about my general training schedule and then again about how it needed to be modified. Well here is what I am hoping to do in my final 5 weeks leading up to the race. I am only showing you my weekend efforts (long runs and rides). My weekday work outs are just too hard to pin down.

Weeks until race

Run (miles)

Bike (miles)

5

10

100

4

13

60

3

16

115

2

20

50-70

1

10

30

0

RACE (26.2)

RACE (112)

I am happy to report that my swim is going really well! I did 4350 yards (that is longer than an Ironman swim) last night in 75 minutes! OK, I better go do some more training now…

Last week was a rest week so this week should have been a build week. I definitely did more than the prior week but the weekend rain kept me from getting all the bike miles in I should have; the time I did spend on the bike was concentrated on cadence for sure. I was able to have a more consistent week. I didn’t take a single day off! That is a major improvement for me!!! The work that is being done by my physical therapist has FIXED my ribs!!! They still hurt when I sneeze but my swimming is back on track!

The other notable item is that my run is coming back! I am still having discomfort in my knee from the IT band, but none of the full blown crazy pain. I even managed to squeak out 6 wet and muddy trail mile on Sunday! (I can’t wait to get back to the trails!!!!)

This week will be focused on trying to keep my run going, getting 10,000 yards in the water, and another 100 mile ride on my bike. Most importantly on the big ride this weekend I am going to work on less breaks off the bike during the ride and I am going to try out a new nutrition option. I have to get better about fueling during my ride or my race may end early on May 5th!

On a couple side notes, it was really cool to meet Thomas O. and his family. They stopped in my town on their spring break trip. It is always cool to meet the Dailymile people IRL! I also tested a new cycling training video from 3LC.TV

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I was contacted the other day by 3LC.TV to see if I would like to try one of their training videos. Since I have to us an indoor trainer during the week for my bike training I was very excited to be given the opportunity to add a new training video to my arsenal. I was sent a copy of the Ladies Sportive which essentially is a work out that takes you through the different stages of a race.

It breaks down to a warm up, a SOLID 40 minutes of guided training, then a 10 minute cool down. During the work out some of the things you are instructed to use your bike to simulate are hill riding, covering the moves, through and off, lead out, and of course a final sprint. All of the instruction is related to cadence and perceived effort. I have done computrainer training which is very specific per individual and requires special testing before you can do it. The beauty of a work out like this is it is based on cadence (which most of us already have on our bikes) and perceived effort. There is no special equipment needed (you can watch the cyclists in the video and match their cadence if you don’t have that on you bike). I find perceived effort is a great way to gauge your training so this works great for me!

Overall I found the work out to be very well structured and extremely effective. Recently I have been working on my cadence so I worked really hard to match the prescribe cadence for each set and as a result I had a great workout. Each set was long timed perfectly in my opinion. One of the things I really enjoyed was that the video really makes you feel like you are having a training session with a coach. There was a lot of talk about what type of race simulation we were doing and most importantly there were many reminders about proper form. My favorite set was the “through and off” which simulated riding in a line and then taking your turn pulling like you would see in a breakaway group. It was very challenging but fun. At all times during the video you are shown what you are doing, how much time is left in the set, and what the next set is.

Over all it was a very good training video. My only complaint is the lack of music. Music is very helpful to me when I am exercising. At the same time I am training for Ironman St. George where I am not allowed any music; so it might be in my best interest to do some work without my tunes. One last plus was the five different stretching videos at the end. I am notoriously bad about stretching so the fact that they are right there was really nice! I can’t wait to try all of them!

I would recommend the video as effective cycling training video. It is a little bit more expensive than some other products out there but it is a DVD (nice quality) and it has the stretching included. It definitely was effective for me; see the graph of my HR and cadence below…

This week turned out to be a rest/down week. Issues at home kept me from getting all the workout in that I was planning. But luckily the physical therapy I am doing seems to be doing the trick. Shut the front door, I actually got a real run in out on the road! The most exciting part of the was that the physical therapist worked on my messed up ribs and pretty much fixed them! Two days after I saw him I did a 4200 yard (Ironman distance) swim. So at this point I am feeling pretty good about the swim and the bike. 2 out of three ain’t bad!

This week is going to be a challenge because it is spring break for my kids so we are heading out of town for a couple days. My focus will be to keep doing the PT exercises and stretching with my myorope (review to follow soon) and my foam roller. I feel that the tide is changing and things will start going my way…